Shakespeare's superb narrative poems and sonnets give us the most direct connection we possess to the movements of reflection and emotion in our greatest writer. In themselves, they are essential to our legacy as thinking and feeling people; as products of Shakespeare's mind, they provide endlessly illuminating evidence about the person who occupies the center of our literary civilization.

China today is ruled by a party-state totalitarian dictatorship. That is the conclusion of Stein Ringen’s thoughtful and careful analysis in his new book The Perfect Dictatorship. It is a conclusion... [ Read full review ]